


Call across Landmines

by Hollybush



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 02:54:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14095548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hollybush/pseuds/Hollybush
Summary: She'd walked away, or rather, she'd watched him walk away, and she’d known she wouldn’t hear from him again. He would never call.Yet here she is, driving across states, because she did hear from him.Though technically, Oliver didn't call.Elio did.





	Call across Landmines

**Author's Note:**

> This has been on my desktop for weeks now. I'm not pleased with it but I'm not getting anywhere either, so I'm posting it as is. 
> 
> This was generously looked over by JWAB, for which THANK YOU!, but I fiddled around with it after so all mistakes are still mine. 
> 
> This could take place in the Deliver Me-verse, if one wanted it too.

 

1

 

 

_Hi...._

Her world stopped with that word.

 

_This is ...erm...this is Elio. I'm calling about Oliver...or...well, I don't think he would want me to call you..but...I figured.,.you're his parents, you know? So maybe you want me to call. And if you don't, then you can just erase this message._

_Anyway, he's okay, he's going to be okay, because...But there was an accident and he’s unconscious right now and...anyway, he's at Presbyterian._

She'd stared at the answering machine for a good ten minutes before she'd had the sense to sit down.

 

The next thing she consciously remembers is being in her car, on her way to New York. She's never driven herself much of anywhere before. They travel quite often, to nice places and even nicer hotels and they mingle with the right people and have a lovely time. But she’s never gone anywhere alone, not really. She feels like she’s stepped into another life, one she probably would not have stepped into if Herb had been home to listen to that message with her.

 

How she even got from staring at the phone to walking up to her closet, packing a trolley and backing out the driveway within a timespan of about 25 minutes, is something she can reflect on later.

 

She will be back soon enough, which is what she told the housekeeper on the note she left by the phone. Herb won’t be back from his trip to Tulsa until Monday and she will be back by then. She will be back and her life will continue without Oliver. There is no other way and they both made their choice.

 

She takes comfort in that fact, as much as it pains her.

 

 

 

                                                                                    *

Well, she got here.

 

Now what?

 

She paid an exorbitant fee to park her car, entered the hospital trying to pretend this is where she belonged, asked for her son’s room at reception, and now here she is. And there he is. His injuries serious enough for him to be unconscious but his face practically unmarred. One tiny scratch above his left eye the only thing disturbing the peace. He looks beautiful, which should be strange under these circumstances but she hasn’t seen him in years and besides that, Oliver was always movie-star beautiful.

 

She takes a breath deep enough to echo because yes, there he is.

 

But also….there _he_ is.

 

Slumped in a chair next to the bed, head resting on the matrass next to Oliver’s hip. One hand curled over her son’s wrist and one protectively around his own stomach. 

 

He’s so slight. Pale and thin.

 

She stares at him which she reprimands herself for because she knows better than to be rude, but she can’t help it.

 

He lifts his head then, blinks confusedly and then his eyes focus on her.

 

For a fraction of a second, she can see what made Oliver stop and turn to take stock if this boy had fixed his eyes on her son this way. Large and deep, emphatic but slightly haughty as well. It pulls at her but raises her hackles at the same time.

 

And then he’s up, the haze lifted from his eyes, his feet feather light as he takes a step towards her.

 

“You’re here. Wow, you really look like Oliver. Or, I guess he looks like you..”

 

He smiles and he’s foolishly young.

 

“Do you want to..”

 

And he gestures at the bed.

 

“I can get you a chair. Do you want a coffee or something? I can run to the machine. It’s shitty coffee, it’s not like at home, but that’s an espresso machine, we brought it from Italy...”

 

He stops talking abruptly, as if he remembered he was talking about something he shouldn’t be talking about, which she supposes is true enough.

 

He gives her a few minutes alone with Oliver as he runs for the terrible coffee and goes in search of another chair and she’s grateful for it but as soon as he leaves the room, she’s at a loss. She looks at her son in a hospital bed and remembers that they weren’t supposed to see each other again. That’s how it was supposed to go. She looks at him and she can’t decide on any course of action. She can’t bring herself to move, to speak. He wouldn’t want it from her and she knows this. She’s not sure if she’s refraining out of respect for his wishes or out of respect for her own fears.

 

She finds herself wishing for Elio to come back because even with Oliver unconscious, he felt like the mediator in the room. He called her, which means he must at least find it acceptable for her to be here and that knowledge makes the room less hostile. 

 

 

*

 

 

They stand at the foot of Oliver’s bed together as the doctor fills her in on the details. She listens but half her attention is focused on Elio’s hand hovering near her son’s. He’s not actually holding his hand but he’s constantly on the edge of touching him and she knows she is the reason he is holding back.

 

Had she not been here, he would have been seated in what looks like a deeply uncomfortable chair, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the skin of Oliver’s wrist, the way he was when she arrived. She feels a little bit of smugness at his hesitance to keep up that sort of thing with her around, but it’s a smugness with a bitter aftertaste, like she should be ashamed of it and it settles heavy in her stomach.

 

She nods in the right places and asks the right questions and hears enough to know that while her son is not in the best of shape, it could have been much worse and he is mostly kept asleep because it will help him heal faster.

 

She feels instantly calmer, always having had faith in doctors’ words but Elio doesn’t seem to share her relief. He nods too, though he remains silent, but his body turns this way and that, eyes flitting from Oliver to the doctor to her and back. His one hand constantly near Oliver’s body, the other combing back his hair non-stop.

 

She wants to snap at him to keep still and immediately after feels the need to apologize for even having the thought.

 

She’s out of place here, her comfort zone a fading dot on the horizon. She wants to be sure of herself, to know that what she believes is supported and proved right wherever she looks. She won’t find that here, not in this city and not in any part of Oliver’s world and it makes her itching to flee this scene, run for the shelter of her own familiar world but she came here on nothing but instinct and that same instinct tells her she will see it through until she got what she came for. Whatever that is. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

_He_ is not what she expected. At all. She can’t say she’s spent much time contemplating the kind of man Oliver would have left his family and his future for, but she also can’t say she hasn’t spent _any_ time on it, and not once has she imagined this person to be anything like Elio.

 

Perhaps it’s because Oliver is so tall and strong, the absolute embodiment of the classic male, but Elio strikes her as much too small, too slight, too lithe.

 

His face is so pale and his eyes seem sad and bright and ancient and young all at the same time. She honestly cannot make up her mind whether he is a boy or a man.

 

He’s unfailingly polite, but it doesn’t feel fake, it just feels like he is used to being polite and sees no reason to make her an exception.

 

He’s soft-spoken, though he talks fast, and she likes the sound of his voice. She finds herself turning her body to wherever he is when he opens his mouth. She catches herself because she has self-control and she is in no way pleased with this automatic response to him, but it’s still true. He draws her in and she’s not sure if that’s because he is in Oliver’s life and she, despite all odds and objections, wants to know more about him, or if it’s because he just has this effect on her on his own merit. She’s not in a rush to find out the answer either.

 

*

 

Elio offers her the spare room.

 

_More like a large closet, but it has a spare bed for when my parents come to stay, or my cousins, or Marzia._

She doesn't want to accept it, but she wants even less to refuse it and he must see that because before she can politely decline, he’s gone off ahead and flagged down a cab. She doesn't want to see Oliver's home and have this boy wander around in it like he belongs there, which she knows is what will happen because Oliver shares his life and so his home with this boy and so he _does_ belong there.

 

Elio.

 

She can hear his name the way Oliver says it. Round and soft around the L, love curling around the i-o. Soft-spoken and musical.

 

She'd said Oliver's name that way, once upon when.

 

Their love had not curled so effortlessly around Oliver's name for long though, preoccupied with what he'd failed to live up to. She still doesn't think they were wrong for wanting what they wanted. They still want it, her and Herb both, though she knows Herb cannot forgive the unforgivable and would never consider any sort of chance beyond a first. She's not sure she could either and she's glad in a way that she's never been offered the chance.

 

Oliver had been the one to walk away from them and it's the last mercy he'd bestowed on her.

 

It's Elio who is bestowing this one, walking around their cramped apartment, bigger though than she'd remembered, lighter too. Their happiness permeating the walls, the spaces between, like cinnamon in the air when walking past a bakery.

 

She watches him patiently and is glad for the reprieve. She fares better when she’s granted some time to observe. Oliver is the same, or used to be. She doesn’t know the person he is today but that part might still be true. She can see how Oliver, who always tried to be smaller than he was, less conspicuous, would be fascinated with someone like Elio, who uses his entire body to take up as much space as he can and fills every silence he happens upon.

 

Elio is hospitable. It's in his nature to offer things to people, to make room for them and their opinions. She can tell immediately it's something his upbringing must have given him, but it's also something that he comes by naturally. She recognises the signs of the first but not the second. She's always been hospitable because her lifestyle demands it but it is never something she does not do consciously, she has to work at it. Elio does not. She watches him dash around his house, picking shirts off chairs and clearing away plates, agile and quick on his feet but slightly awkward as well. He must be feeling a bit off-kilter with her in his living room but he’s putting it aside like he’s used to doing so.

 

He shows her the guestroom, which really is more like a closet than anything else, and the bathroom and he explains things like squeaky doors and the water turning cold after 9 minutes and how they’d timed it once, after one too many arguments about whose fault it was that the water ran cold. She doesn’t want to hear any of this but she can’t stop listening. As he talks, she tries to see it all unfold in her mind’s eye. Their squabbles over shower time and who’s making the coffee and running late and whose turn it is to try and get their fitted sheet to actually fit the matrass.

 

She doesn’t want to know any of it and yet she can see it all, can picture it easily. In every image, Oliver’s smiling.

 

She regrets that it makes her want to smile. She should be angry about it, mourn it, be upset. He made the wrong choice, she believes that still. This is a life he was never meant to live. But it’s one he chose and he is happy in it.

 

It is a runner-up to what she wanted for him, but it’s not last place. Not last.

 

 

 

 

*

 

“He’s a terrible dancer.”

 

She looks up.

 

“In Italy, in 83, he danced a lot. At Le Danzing…we’d all go there at night. Well, not me always because I was never really…But he did. He’s terrible at it but he loves to dance. I think that’s when I ….he danced to _Love My Way_ , do you know that song? We always dance to it now, when it comes on. We don’t have a song or anything, but if we did…Or maybe we do but we have like a dozen. We have _songs_ , plural.”

 

She doesn’t know the song but she wants to know it. Wants to know that next time it’s on the radio, they are dancing to it, somewhere. She also wants him to stop talking because every word he says is important to her and she’s hanging onto every single one.

 

“I’m sure I don’t know that song.”

 

He doesn’t say anything but he moves to the piano, sits down and starts to play. It’s an upbeat tune, a bit uncomfortable on the piano.

 

“Yeah, it doesn’t really work on the piano but I wanted you to know it. I’ll turn it up when it’s on the radio sometime, if you’re here.”

 

“I like it this way.”

 

And the way he looks at her tells her she gave away too much.

 

“You play well.”

 

The words sound cold, unconvincing to her, but he smiles in acknowledgement all the same.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Elio sings and does it rather well. She thinks maybe he does this often. He’s a bit of a performer, a show off. He moves with his whole body, his face contorting with the feel of the notes he’s playing, the emotion it invokes, the energy it takes out of him to not just play the notes but feel them.

 

He plays beautifully, there is no denying that. She can see him just as easily playing to a sold-out concert hall but there is something in the way he does it now, sitting at the piano in jeans that are a tad too big. Like he’s there all the time, and she figures he must be. He must play like this a lot, for Oliver.

 

“I play for him.”

 

She didn’t say it out loud, but Elio seems to read minds.

 

“Like…erm…things I compose, at school or just…things I know he likes.”

 

His smile dims a little and he stares off into the distance a bit. Fiddles with the hem of his shirt. He’s constantly moving but there’s different kinds of energy attached to it, she’s coming to see. He twirls and dances and bounces when he’s moving from one room to the other, casual and melodious. He also does these things when he’s not casual, when he is agitated, nervous, scared but then there’s no melody, no lightness to it. The weight on his shoulders holding him down. She’s aware she doesn’t know him well enough to distinguish between all of those but his face is an open book and she’s always been rather a good reader.

 

“Bach. He loves Bach.”

 

_Does he?_

 

She hears the words bounce around in her mind as if she’d spoken them out loud. Her son loves Bach and she had no idea. No idea that Bach meant anything to him. Yet another part of her son that’s unfamiliar to her.

 

It’s best not to think about that, not here.

 

“You compose?”

 

“Yeah, yeah…I’m…I’m at Juilliard. Final year now, almost done. Should probably think about a career or something but it seems far away still, you know? And we’re gonna go back to Crema this summer so…”

 

Head down, eyes on his feet.

 

“Maybe we’ll stay here this year.”

 

He takes a breath as if to steel himself. Perhaps he is also choosing not to think about certain things, not here.

 

“I play a lot. Helps me settle or when I think too much…or when I have a bad day. Oliver knows so sometimes he’ll request things. When I’m moping, he’ll ask me to play things he knows I love, it’s for me, not for him.”

 

“What..”

 

Her voice comes out stutteringly, as if it too is unsure how to proceed.

 

“What does he request?”

 

“Liszt sometimes or Busoni. He likes to request things off the radio too, you know, so when I get fidgety, he’ll do that until I’m okay again.”

 

He stops suddenly, and it feels empty because he talks so much and so fast, so fluently, he fills every space he’s in with movement and sound. Watching him is like watching a performance to her. She’s not used to so much color.

 

Oliver had described him to her once, equaled him to the sun. She’d thought he was just waxing poetic, talking Elio up, but she thinks now that maybe he really did mean the sun. Elio is so intensely _present_ , so _bright_ , it’s like staring into the sun. Blinding.

 

It’s uncomfortable and frustrating and she wants to tell him to back off just a little, just back off, she needs breathing room. But then he’s fighting tears and she almost moves out of her chair, a mother’s instinct long since buried, rearing its head at the sight of him blinking away tears.

 

In a different day and age, this boy would have been her son-in-law.

 

Again, it’s like he can hear every word she’s thinking because he smiles and even though it’s watery, it’s genuine too.

 

“Do you want to know about him?”

 

_Do you want me to tell you about him_ is what he doesn’t say because she would not be able to bring herself to say yes to that. This one she can say yes too.

 

He nods and takes a deep breath, as if gearing up for full steam ahead.

 

“He eats a lot. Or he would, if he would just let himself. He’s very strict when it comes to how much he allows himself, but sometimes when I get him talking about something he’s passionate about and he can’t stop himself, then he’ll forget he’s supposed to limit himself and he’ll eat like twice as much. I wonder if he was like that as a child sometimes…”

 

He leaves the question in the air between them and she answers because he’s given her enough without making her ask for it and she doesn’t like being in anyone’s debt.

 

“He used to get out of bed late at night when he thought we wouldn’t notice and sneak into the kitchen. He could never reach the cookie jar but he kept trying, as if he thought he might have grown tall enough overnight.”

 

And he was tall enough one day but by that time, he’d given up on many things already, midnight cookies the least of them. She wonders sometimes, in the darkest hours of the night, when Herb is gone and she stares at the ceiling and tries to picture Oliver as he was before he left for Italy, before he left them, if he had stopped trying to sneak things past them because all his energy was going into sneaking other, much larger, things past them.

 

“He likes my clothes.”

 

She stares at his shirt with a picture she does not understand, his worn jeans, his bare feet and can’t help the raise of her eyebrow.

 

“I know, right? But he does. He never wears them, except when we go out. He lets me pick his shirt then because he only owns decent clothes he can wear to work, all his other stuff is in Italy, so he lets me pick something of mine. He fidgets all night but he wears it.”

 

 

“He can cook. Quite well too. Mafalda, that’s our cook back in Crema, she lets him cook her recipes even, in her kitchen. That’s never happened in like…ever, but she adores Oliver, has from the start. Everyone did, I couldn’t believe it.”

 

 

“He likes teaching, he loves his students but he really hates grading essays. Every time the end of term comes near and he has to start grading like a million essays, he gets really grumpy. I always end up having to lure him away with a song and wine or something, or ask him to cook for me, which makes him a little mad because he doesn’t think it’s fair that I ask that when I know he has to grade those essays but he also knows that’s the reason I’m asking, and so he can’t really say no…”

 

 

“He gets really annoyed when I move his books. I move things around all the time because…I don’t really know why, I borrow his shirts and stuff and then I leave them places, and I put my stuff down randomly. He’s not much neater so he doesn’t care but when I move his books, he gets annoyed because I’ll read pages of whatever he’s reading and then his book is suddenly in the kitchen or something, when he left it next to the bed and then it’s also on a different page and he gets really annoyed but he also doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it so he’ll try to be all reasonable about it..”

 

A laugh bursts out and shatters, sharp and loud around the edges.

 

“I think maybe he’s still afraid that I’ll leave or something, if he gets too mad. Like I ever would…like I could.”

 

“Couldn’t you?”

 

“I could, technically. But I don’t want to, ever, and doesn’t that automatically mean I couldn’t?”

 

He’s looking at her like he he’s really asking her. Like he wants an answer because he can’t figure it out. As if she could.

 

“You’ve been together a while.”

 

“Yes, longer than either of us have been with anyone else. Doesn’t feel like that though. I have so many moments where I just can’t believe my luck.”

 

He looks at her, dead straight, his mouth a bit tight but not unfriendly.

 

“I guess that must be painful for you to hear because you wanted such different things for him.”

 

He sympathizes, she realizes, but he’s not apologizing.

 

“Yes.”

 

There’s nothing else to say to that.

 

“Does it not help at all? To know that he’s happy, at least? That he’s not alone, that he’s loved?”

 

She doesn’t respond but she doesn’t look away from him either. She takes in his earnest face, his eyes showing his heart as if it’s not all too easy to stomp on it and hand it back damaged.

 

“I love him.”

 

She almost laughs at that, a bitter, ugly sound, because yes, clearly. That’s part of the problem, for her.

 

“I know that.”

 

It’s silent for a long time.

 

“It doesn’t not help.”

 

He nods. He’ll take it.

 

 

 

*

 

This is perhaps the most bizarre night of her life.

 

She is on the sofa, Elio is on the floor. There’s cartons of food all over the coffee table. Chinese, Indian, Italian (below par, Elio tells her and she believes him but it’s still very good), Thai and hot dogs from some hideous place called Papaya _Something_ that she’d be happy never to set foot in again.

 

They’d spent most of the day at the hospital again but when the time came to leave, Elio had suggested taking the long way back and stopping to pick up takeaway. She’d agreed but when he’d asked her what she’d like because he knew a few good places, depending on which cuisine she preferred and she’d informed him that she never actually had takeout because they had a chef who prepared nutritious and perfectly healthy meals, he’d stopped in the middle of the street. Actually stopped to stare at her as if she’d grown three heads.

 

_Right_ , he’d said. _Okay. Let’s do this. We’ll make it count then. We’ll do them all._            

 

He’d dragged her to 5 different places, one especially and only for the eggrolls that were apparently, superior to all other eggrolls, and reheated some of it when they got back to the apartment.

 

He’d got a bottle of wine out, grabbed a pillow off the sofa and threw his shoes to the side, gesturing to the sofa.

 

“Start with the Italian, then Chinese, work up to Thai. Here, try this eggroll. You’ll want to move to New York just for this eggroll.”

 

She’s aware he’s at least partly faking it, this casualness around her. This talking to her as if they know each other, as if they’re on friendly terms. But she didn’t get in her car and crossed state lines for the alternative and she’s good at playing the part if she wants to. Right now, she wants to.

 

“You love this eggroll unnaturally much.”

 

He stares at her again at that, but in a very different way.

 

“You’re so much like him.”

 

Her heart skips a beat at that and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry but he saves her from responding as he shakes his head, shaking it off, and laughs a little.  

 

“Oliver always says that if I ever have to choose between him and the eggroll, he knows his place.”

 

“Is he right?”

 

The grin gets bigger.

 

“Big time.”

 

 

*

 

 

It’s difficult, this. Occupying space in Oliver’s flat, sharing a kitchen with his…with Elio. Seeing his life and having no trouble at all picturing him there. It’s like she can see Oliver’s place in every one of Elio’s moves, the way he sticks to a few minutes bath room time, clears the plates as he knows Oliver would and putting his mail and his keys next to Oliver’s.

 

She can see Oliver there, she can feel his presence and at the same time, it’s like it’s not her son she’s seeing. Not her Oliver. Which makes perfect sense because he wasn’t _her_ Oliver, apparently never really had been.

 

It both hurts and it doesn’t. She’s mourning someone that never existed and while that means pain for her, it does not mean pain for anyone else, for Oliver, and she’s grateful for that. He is still her son and she does not want to see him suffer.

 

She just does not _want_ to see him this happy in this life either. She still wishes he’d chosen differently. That makes her a terrible mother, in the eyes of many. In the eyes of her son. To wish him happy and accept his, makes her a terrible wife in the eyes of her husband and a terrible Jew in the eyes of many more.

 

She doesn’t like either of those options, but if she absolutely cannot win…Perhaps she will have to decide for herself how much she can stand to lose.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

He’s awake and it’s over.

 

She knows as soon as the hospital calls to let them know. He’s in his shoes before he’s properly hung up the phone, the cord stretched to its maximum length, one arm in his denim jacket, the other lost in translation.

 

She reaches up and untangles the cord, or him from it, rather, places the horn back with care and turns to see him watching her.

 

“You’re not coming.”

 

She shakes her head.

 

The disappointment in his eyes weighs on her and it rattles her a little. Disappointment is a feeling she knows well and she recognizes it easily in him, but she has a life to go back to, that she _wants_ to go back to, and it will only be there if she lets this one go. It’s either one or the other.

 

“Goodbye, Elio”

 

She offers her hand and he knows this is all she’ll ever offer. He presses his warm hand against hers and nods. He doesn’t say anything, but she understands immediately and why that doesn’t bother her anymore is another one for the road.

 

“I am grateful that he has you.”

 

His face doesn’t give anything away but his grip tightens just a bit.

 

“He should be loved.”

 

“ _You_ love him.”

 

Yes. _But._

 

“But I don’t accept him.”

 

His face contorts like she’s physically hurt him, or maybe just like she’s hurt him and she has. She wants to make it right, because she never will be able to for Oliver, not in person, not really, not ever.

 

“You accept him and you love him. And he loves you.”

 

“Yes”

 

This time, it’s she who tightens their grip.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She drops him off at the hospital because waiting for his taxi while she has a car right there seems ridiculous after the time they’ve spent together these past few days.

 

When he gets out, he looks back at her and she understands what he’s saying.

 

She nods.

 

So does he, and he doesn’t protest. He’d hoped for a different answer but had already accepted his one.

 

She leans forward though, before he closes the door on her, on this.

 

“Take care of him.”

 

He raises his eyes to her and she’s no less affected than the first time she saw him here, in this hospital. Not a lifetime but a life ago.

 

“He’s okay. He’s...he's happy.”

 

“Promise me.”

 

She has no right to demand such a thing, not a mother choosing to leave her child behind but she knows Elio will let her because love for Oliver is the one thing they have in common and he would never make light of that.

 

“He’s everything.”

 

She nods again and this time, she lets him close the door. He does it gently, carefully, only letting go of the handle after he hears the lock click. He lingers for a moment and then walks off.

 

He doesn’t turn back.

 

 

*

 

 

An hour into the trip, she parks her car on an empty lot, leans her arms on the steering wheel and cries until she’s hollow.

 

It feels like she's emptying herself of years of grief. After, she fixes her make-up, takes her purse and goes into the gas station. She stares into the dingy bathroom mirror until she recognises most of what she sees.

 

She gets back in the car, fixes her rearview mirror, and backs out, back onto the highway. The espresso is hot and strong and gritty as the road ahead. The radio has been mostly static but music is starting to filter through. She reaches out to switch stations just as the song changes.

 

_There’s an army on the dance floor_

_It’s a fashion with a gun, my love_

 

She reaches out instinctively to turn it off but she lets it go of that instinct the way she let go of so many other things these past few days. Instead she turns up the volume, just slightly, and smiles.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've started working on something new but if the inspiration strikes, I may come back and add to this. Until then, I hope you enjoyed it anyway.


End file.
